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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (37473)	8/13/2002 3:08:43 PM
From: Bilow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Hi CobaltBlue; Re "Nobody (on this thread or anywhere else that I recall) predicted that we'd be able to rely on the Northern Alliance, and nobody had any real way of knowing how little support the Taliban had in most of Afghanistan." What you're describing is the Stratfor position at the time. Not everybody agreed with them. I went back to see what I was posting on the subject. I know that I wasn't the only one predicting that the Taliban would not be able to put up significant resistance, but I went back to see what I put in print. The problem is that the center of discussion was on whether or not the US would be able to get rid of the Taliban at all, rather than a question of how effective the Northern Alliance would be. A lot of folks were saying that the US would have a hard time of it in Afghanistan, but a lot were saying otherwise: Bilow, October 14, 2001 And when our ground troops kick their asses soon enough it will be by taking advantage of every tactic possible. U.S. ground forces are famous for setting up effective ambushes. Will the Taliban soldier who is shot by a sniper equipped with an infrared imaging system from 2 klicks away call that "face to face"? Combat with knives is face to face, which is exactly how the terrorists took over those planes. #reply-16500867 Bilow, October 15, 2001 (1) Pancho Villa was a Mexican native, bin Laden is an Arab operating in a non Arab nation. (2) Pancho Villa seemed to get a lot more support from the locals, without the need for guns. (3) The locals never got to experience a totalitarian Fundamentalist regime under Pancho Villa. ... Again [Blackhawk Down] is an example where it was not the objective of the United States to topple the government. And there are a lot of other differences. For one thing, the American people are resigned to seeing their soldiers killed, but they want action anyway. Another difference between this and the Sudan is that despite all the crap given out by the government, I doubt that a very high percent of the population really cares about how many Afghanistani civilians we "collateralize". In fact, it would be difficult to think of something a militarily reasonable action you could do to Afghanistan that would leave fewer people alive 10 years from now than the simple (and vicious) act of leaving them to stew in their own juices. The bloodiest wars are the ones that go on for long times between equally matched opponents. There's nothing like the application of overwhelming force (or complete peace) to reduce total fatalities in war. That's why I advocate a foreign policy of either war or peace, with less stuff going on like what we do to Iraq. #reply-16503394 also see #reply-16516314 Bilow, October 16, 2001 Hi Condor; The hard liners will dissolve in tears of love as soon as we get shown pictures of Afghanistani children celebrating the liberation of Kabul. But as long as there is still fighting to be done the government has to promote some of that hard edge. Killing is not easy to stomach. It will dissolve soon enough, I predict. #reply-16509264 Bilow, October 21, 2001 Hi chooseanother; Re winter coming. The approach of winter is a very good thing for the U.S., very bad for the Taliban. ... #reply-16534770 So at least some of us weren't excessively worried about Afghanistan being difficult, though it would have been hard to predict that the Northern Alliance was capable of doing it essentially on their own. -- Carl P.S. For those who are convinced by my stand on the Iraqi invasion that Bilow is a peace loving tree hugger, who never thinks violence is the answer, here's what I was saying about Afghanistan: Already in this war, the Washington Post says that the U.S. targeted the SUV driven by the leader of the Taliban: ... It would be hard to argue that such a vehicle is anything other than a civilian target. (I should mention that I'm in favor of such targeting, and would pay good money for the gun camera footage.) #reply-16500855 But from the same day, in response to CobaltBlue's comment that "they" seemed to not be members of the human species: Traditionally, we've dehumanized our enemies, but is it really necessary to get literal about it? In all likelihood we're going to be treating these people as allies in a few years, just like the Germans and Japanese. #reply-16500834 I favor violence on occasion, but I will never dehumanize an enemy. By the way, there are enough people like me in this country that we will never build gas chambers, regardless of the provocation. Another correct prediction of mine (in addition to that Afghanistan would not be difficult) was that the reports of anthrax attacks all over the world were false. For example, see Attack of the killer dust bunnies! #reply-16513433 Hi HG; Re Kenya and Anthrax. My (unschooled) opinion: The Anthrax scare is world wide. With 5 billion people looking for Anthrax in the mail, there's bound to be some false positives somewhere. It just doesn't make much sense, so it's unlikely to be true. #reply-16527586 I'm guessing that Iraq is involved with the anthrax stuff. ... I have a suspicion that the anthrax and jetliner stuff was not organized by the same group. It's either that or they are nowhere near as smart as we're thinking they are. #reply-16531899